Tray icon missing

  • Thread starter Thread starter Menno Hershberger
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Menno Hershberger

I just installed MAS on someone's computer yesterday (XP-SP2). I know it's
working because I was getting alert windows and the 2 AM scan ran. I am
certain that the trap icon was there when I first installed it, but it
disappeared shortly thereafter. Rebooting doesn't bring it back. Task
Manager shows gcasServ.exe and gcasDTServ.exe as running.
Seems like there's been mention of that before in here, but I don't
remember if anyone had a solution. The customer will probably never know
the difference, but I'd kind of like to see it there. "Just because" :-)
Does this strike a note with anybody?
 
a reboot would normally result in the MSAS icon showing up

can you boot into safe mode and run a full scan, reboot and see whether the icon
show ups?
 
Check your system for -very cool- tray icons. tray
enhancements that collect tray icons in subtrays and
icons that popup in interesting ways may be hooking the
tray to add their cool-ness. sometimes they prevent
icons from showing... especially icons that use some of
the newer ShellTrayIcon features.

I have written one of these in the past...
 
From Robin Walker:
The unexpected disappearance of icons from the System Notification Area
(formerly known as the System Tray), even when they are configured always to
show, appears to be a long-standing bug in XP. As you have already
discovered, the missing icons always return if you Log Off and Log On again.
But if you Restart, the icons disappear again.

The problem appears to be a little non-deterministic: no-one has found a set
of rules that guarantees it will happen, so that the Windows shell team
developers could investigate what it going on. The problem has however been
experienced by many users.

However, there is one heavily implicated issue which might be provoking the
problem, and most people suffering from this problem agree that it could be
an issue with them: delays (possibly networking) during the initialisation
of some of the processes which put up the Notification Area icons. In other
words, if one of the earlier processes which posts a Notification Area icon
is held up for some reason, then later processes fail to post their
Notification Area icon at all. Typical reason for a delay might be waiting
for a network response which never comes, or a crash which causes a minidump
in the background.

In your case, I would guess that the HP network printer driver is a prime
suspect for causing this effect. If you have not already done so, I
recommend that you update your HP printer drivers to the latest version
(dated 10-2004) from their site. Also, ensure that your printer is online
and functional when you start Windows.
 
This is being reported with increased frequency, and I am seeing it myself
here on my own machine. I'm not going to waste time on it--I believe folks
are finding that an update install fixes it.
 
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